Ray on Tarski on Logical Consequence

Abstract

In “Logical consequence: A defense of Tarski” (Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 25, 1996, pp. 617–677), Greg Ray defends Tarski"s account of logical consequence against the criticisms of John Etchemendy. While Ray"s defense of Tarski is largely successful, his attempt to give a general proof that Tarskian consequence preserves truth fails. Analysis of this failure shows that de facto truth preservation is a very weak criterion of adequacy for a theory of logical consequence and should be replaced by a stronger absence-of-counterexamples criterion. It is argued that the latter criterion reflects the modal character of our intuitive concept of logical consequence, and it is shown that Tarskian consequence can be proved to satisfy this criterion for certain choices of logical constants. Finally, an apparent inconsistency in Ray"s interpretation of Tarski"s position on the modal status of the consequence relation is noted.